


Who You Gonna Call?

by thirteenbythirteen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Also Steve Rogers makes an appearance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Peter Parker, Bisexual Tony Stark, Canon Compliant until the end of Avengers:Endgame, I'm going to fix Endgame for you nerds, Irondad, Light Angst, Multi, No Starker so leave that at the fucking door, Not Spider-Man: Far From Home Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Endgame, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark comes back as a ghost ok, lots of swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2020-09-23 04:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20334340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirteenbythirteen/pseuds/thirteenbythirteen
Summary: That's it. Thanos is beaten, Tony Stark is dead, and the world has to live on without him.Except Tony Stark just woke up in a forest, and he's pretty sure he's not dead. In fact, he's pretty sure that he's a ghost, one that no one can see, hear, or touch, and he's not sure how he feels about that.What to do?(AKA Tony is a ghost, and shit goes down.)





	1. In Which Tony Stark Is Not Dead

Tony woke up. 

Which was weird, considering he clearly remembered having died. Maybe that had been a fluke. Maybe by some twist of fate the Gauntlet hadn’t killed him, he’d gone into a coma, and now he was lying in a hospital bed.

But that couldn’t be right. There was sky above him, not the fluorescent lights and tiled ceilings of your run-of-the-mill hospital room. He doubted even the top-secret SHIELD hospitals had massive skylights. 

He sat up quickly in confusion. He was in a forest, full of pine trees, laying on a pile of needles. There were no people or even trails around him. It was no forest Tony recognized, and he’d been in at least two of them. Was this heaven? _If this is heaven, I’d like to go to hell, please, he thought._

And yet it seemed so....how to describe it? The forest felt _alive_, it was _awake_, it was full of _life_. There was a bird chirping from a distant tree, and somewhere he heard faint rustling. Tony was pretty sure that he’d know if he was in heaven. Here was too rustic, too imperfect. There was a pine needle sticking into his leg uncomfortably. It was cold too, and there was no warm or safe feeling, just a chilly stillness interrupted occasionally by a sound or a breeze. All his instincts were screaming that he was on Earth -- where he was on Earth, he didn’t know -- but on the living planet nonetheless. 

He tried to wrap his mind around it. He _remembered dying_. He remembered the agony in his body as the power of the Infinity Stones coursed through his blood, his veins, his very essence. He remembered the effort it took to choke out the few words he had left in him. He could picture in his mind the horrified faces of Pepper, and Rhodey, and Peter. There had been no fight left in him, nothing for him to do but fade away into nothing. And there had been the feel of nothing, too. It was like all his memories and thoughts were slowly being erased from existence like wiping notes off a whiteboard. He lost basic things first, like what his middle name or his address was. Then he lost every piece of knowledge he had ever known: it was almost as if he could see everything from astrophysics to mechanics to basic addition float away. That was accompanied by another jolt of pain, mental rather than physical this time, because all his life intelligence was what he _was_, it was his _definition_, and now he couldn’t even remember what a number was. A great pathetic feeling sank over him as he lost the memories of color, smell, sound, emotion, and the faces of everyone he had ever known he loved. The last thing he had ever experienced was a hollow sense of loss before that, too, winked out. 

Until now. 

Tony knew the horror of death. That was terrifying to him. He’d _died_. He knew he had. Yet here he was, in this forest, on Earth, with every memory and feeling back in his head like it had never left. The only addition to his plethora of knowledge was that he now knew what death felt like. He had no idea if there was an afterlife. Perhaps that came after, but it wasn’t _this_. 

He had never been spiritual, but there was no good explanation as to why he was back. Maybe this is still part of the neural synapses dying, he rationed. _Maybe in a few seconds or minutes, I’ll fade back into nothing. There has got to be a reasonable scientific explanation._

Then he remembered he lived in a world of aliens and wizards and Infinity Stones, and he came to the natural conclusion that there was an explanation, but he certainly didn’t know what it was. Somehow, something had interrupted his death. 

After this realization, Tony finally decided to examine himself, and looked down. “Hah!” He laughed out loud, and the sound was yet another piece of evidence that he was back in reality. Yet something had happened. He could see his hands and legs just fine, and even their colors, but he could also see straight down to the forest floor. It was like the opacity had been turned down on a file. “I’m fucking Casper the ghost.” 

He stood up, and looked down again. He was wearing a suit: one of his nicer ones, he recognized it. It was navy and neatly pressed. His arm, the one that had been burned to the bone by the Gauntlet, was completely fine. It bent normally and everything. Again, like his hands and his legs, they were visible but also see-through. He tried to breathe, and found that while he could physically suck air in, and physically push it out, instead of filling his lungs and flowing into his blood, it just kind of disintegrated into him. It didn’t feel like breathing, and it made him shudder. Great. He was a ghost. 

Tony sighed, and put his hands on his hips. He looked around. “Forest, huh? Why’d I get dumped here?” he asked the air. Maybe it was a fever dream back to when the suit had dumped him in rural Tennessee, but there was no snow on the ground here. And he was wearing a suit. And there was no armor around him. 

He began to walk aimlessly, and he was almost surprised that the leaves crunched underneath his feet. After five minutes with the landscape not having changed one bit, he decided that he was truly in the middle of nowhere. “I don’t want to-- hello? Do I have ghost powers now?” He shook his hands. “Ghost powers, activate!” he yelled. 

Nothing happened. “If I have to walk a hundred miles through this forest I fucking swear--” He bit his lip in frustration. Closing his eyes, he imagined himself in New York. The crowded streets, the hot dog vendors, the boats, the cars, the homeless people crouched by the flow of people, the dirty subways, the skyscrapers, the statues. He imagined himself standing in the middle of it all. Slowly, he opened one eye. 

Nope. Still forest. 

Frantically, Tony tried waving his hands. He clapped them. He stomped his feet. He snapped his fingers on his left hand, and then he snapped his fingers on his right--

He was surrounded by people. 

Actually, he was also surrounded by buildings. It looked like a European city, maybe Bucharest or something, and it was definitely not the forest. Stunned, he snapped his fingers again. This time, he was on a beach. Probably on the Atlantic, by the looks of it, possibly Spain or Florida. He didn’t know. He hadn’t been to the beach in a while. 

“So that’s how it works, huh?” Tony asked his hand with raised eyebrows. “Ironic.” He closed his eyes and imagined New York again, and this time he snapped his fingers. 

Now he was on a dirt road in the middle of dry farmland. _So I can’t control where I want to go. Fuck._ He snapped his fingers again, and again, and again, countless times, until he came to a halt at the Brooklyn Bridge. _All right, I can work with this._ Briskly, he walked down the street with a total air of confidence. A lady talking violently on her cell phone came rushing at him, and before he had time to move out of the way, she ran right through his shoulder. An apology died in his throat. “Oh, fuck no.” 

Another passerby came towards him, an older man, and Tony tried to touch him, but his hand went right through. He shouted in the man’s face, but the man paid no mind. After a few more attempts. Tony concluded that not a single person could hear, see, or feel him in the slightest. 

So he was a total fucking ghost. With no idea where to go, or what to do, or who to contact. 

Great.


	2. In Which Tony Goes Haywire

Tony strode up the street, occasionally walking through people on his way. He made his way down into a subway station and got on the closest train, only realizing when he was on it that he had never once been on the subway, and he had no idea where the train was going. It did not help that he was standing literally inside a pack of commuters -- his left shoulder shared space with a businessman on his phone, and his right side crossed through an elderly Asian woman. If he closed his eyes, there was no way to tell that they were there. 

He got off at a random stop. He had no idea where he was or where he was going. Did it matter? 

Tony rose from the subway station and continued walking. It looked like Manhattan. 

So he couldn’t touch people. Ok. And they couldn’t see or hear him, either. And it didn’t look like it was in movies, where they felt a chill if he passed through them. They paid no attention to his existence whatsoever. Obviously he could touch the ground, as he was walking and not floating -- another thing different from the movies! Maybe he _could_ teleport, but he couldn’t levitate. _Goddammit, that would’ve been so cool,_ he thought. _Confined to a lonely existence forever would be so much better if I could float._

He stopped walking and leaned up against the side of a building. He could touch that too! A woman walked by him and he reached out and tried to tug at her scarf, and although he felt the scratchy fabric for a split second, his hand still went through. He repeated the experiment, attempting to yank at the coats of people walking by him, but to no avail. 

Clothing. He couldn’t touch clothing. 

Tony tried to touch everything. He was on a mission. So far, clothing and people were the only things his body could go through. And pigeons. His foot went through the pigeons. But he could touch trees. If he concentrated really hard, he could put his hand through a thin surface like a car window, or he could just place his hand on the outside. _Neat trick._ Walls were a no-go, though: they seemed too thick. He was starting to seriously doubt the movies’ accuracy on what ghosts could and could not do. 

_Why in the everloving fuck can I touch everything but animals and clothing?_ he mused. Ok, maybe he couldn’t touch living things, with the exception of plants. Clothing seemed a weird exception, but it fell in line with what the movies said. He’d figure it out later. 

_Later._ He had all the fucking time in the world. He could get a pencil and write out some theories on the sidewalk if he wanted to. 

But he didn’t want to. Somehow, _somehow,_ it was nice being a ghost. Everyone knew he was dead; no one knew he was back. There was no one to recognize him. No one asked anything of him. He could do whatever the fuck he felt like with no one to stop him. He didn’t have to put on a suit and save the world. He didn’t have to sit in a workshop or a board room if he didn’t want to. And sure, maybe a board meeting would be nice right about now, but the point was he had absolutely no obligation to go. Money? Screw money, he didn’t need money. And even if he had a million dollars in his hand, no sane person would make a transaction with what they believed to be thin air. 

God, what an idea? He didn’t owe those fuckers over at S.H.I.E.L.D. a goddamn thing. It actually made him laugh out loud. No more risking his life, because he didn’t have one to risk. “‘Cause I’m dead, people! Hah!” he chuckled. 

And then his mood tanked again. Dead. No one -- not Pepper, not Rhodey, not Happy, not Peter, not _Morgan_ \-- would ever know he was back. _Morgan._ He suddenly wanted -- no, _needed_ to see Morgan. 

Immediately, Tony snapped his fingers. He realized only after he appeared on the side of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere that that might be a bad idea. Slowly, he took a deep breath. “Cabin,” he muttered to himself. He visualized it in his mind: the porch, the lake, the couch, the llamas. _Snap._

Well, it was a cabin. An abandoned, run-down cabin, in a mud pit, in the middle of nowhere, next to a dilapidated RV. It looked like it hadn’t been lived in since the 70s. Tony sighed. He thought of Morgan’s face, and of Pepper’s face. He brought up every detail he could remember, screwing up his own face in concentration, trying to get even the bridges of their noses right. _Snap._

Huh. He was standing outside the clinic where Morgan had been born. Every memory from that day came back to him in happy little spurts: the yelling, the bruise on his cheek from where Pepper had not-so-accidentally punched him, the nurse who told him he should probably go sit in the hallway and have a coffee. He smiled sadly. Well, Pepper would certainly never be able to punch him again. _Snap._

And _this_ was not the cabin either, but Tony’s childhood home. It had a smaller house and a few condos on the gaping property now, but he recognized the street. He was standing in the middle of it, and a car ran through him. Another bit of data to add to the growing _Can-I-touch-this_ list in his brain. _Snap._ His favorite deli. He’d taken Pepper to it three times and Morgan to it once, on a brief trip into the city after the Snap, which had depressed him so much they’d never returned. _Snap._ His dorm at MIT, of which he’d had a private suite. _Snap._ The building which had once been the Avengers Tower. The places his fingers sent him weren’t exactly random anymore. They all had personal connections to him. Each one was a little jolt of memory that piled a bit more pain in his heart. 

_For Christ’s sake, enough with the nostalgia, just take me where I want to go! _

_Snap._

Cabin. The cabin. He let out a breath (a ghost breath, really). They still lived there, didn’t they? There was a car in the driveway. The chairs were still out on the porch. And look, there was Gerald, his favorite llama, grazing beyond a tree. 

Could ghosts cry? Not like there was any water in him, but he felt the reflexes anyway. Morgan, and probably Pepper, were in there, doing God knows what. He could just walk through the door. They wouldn’t even see him. 

Tony walked towards the porch steps slowly and shakily. Even if he couldn’t talk to them, even if they couldn’t hear him -- he could see them. He could see them and maybe everything would be all right. And he climbed up the steps, steeled himself, and strode through the door.


	3. In Which Tony Deals With A Lot

It felt so normal. They were both on the couch, Morgan laying across Pepper as Pepper read out loud from a children’s book. It was one Tony had read to Morgan several times. He walked towards them, behind the couch, and almost unconsciously put his hand out to touch Pepper’s head. It passed right through, as he’d expected. 

He sat down at the other end of the couch and listened to Pepper reading. “‘No, silly bunny!’” she squeaked, and Morgan giggled. 

“You do the voice better than Daddy,” she said. 

“Traitor,” Tony muttered, as Pepper’s lips cracked into a small smile. He got up and walked into the kitchen, still listening intently to her voice. He had thought he’d never hear it again. _Just this once, it’s nice to be wrong. _

A note. Maybe he could write a note. It took him a few tries to grasp and open the kitchen drawer, and still more tries to get a pen and paper out. “Come on, come on!” He got the pen in his hand and touched it to the paper, all he could do was scribble. He couldn’t make neat little movements, just wobbly gelatinous ones. It took him three tries to write the letter ‘P’, and it still looked barely legible. 

Fuming, he tossed the paper into the garbage. “I am not,” he said through gritted teeth, “going to write in chicken scratch to my wife like a fucking pen pal!” It was truly an awful way to spend his ghostly existence, however long that would be. And how long before she actually believed it was him? (Probably not long, but he needed an excuse.) What he wanted to do was talk to her, and goddamnit, he could do it! He was an engineer, for fuck’s sake! A brilliant one! He could figure it out! 

Where to start, though? He left the kitchen and strode up the stairs. Gently pushing open the door to what had been his and Pepper’s bedroom, he gaped at the difference. How long had it been since he’d...died? The nightstand was piled with Pepper’s books, and the top of the dresser was scattered with her things. Most of what had made the room his was gone. He could still see a few of his sweatshirts hanging in the closet, and his records and CDs were still on that shelf. But nearly everything else seemed to have been packed away. 

Tony’s mind was drawing a blank. His feet seemed to stick in the doorframe as he took in the sight of the room. When his parents had died, he’d either sold their things or had them in storage by the end of the week. This seemed...more meticulous, more loving, and not at all hasty. He was touched, he really was. He turned his head back towards the stairs, and murmurs from the living room floated up to him. 

He yanked a CD from the shelf at random. It was a Black Sabbath album, and he rolled his eyes wistfully. He knew Pepper had never really understood why he kept the physical collection of CDs and vinyl, but he appreciated her staying quiet about it. 

The CD player was still in her office. Built into the wall, it was one of Tony’s prouder home renovations. It connected to speakers all the way through the house, with controls to which ones you wanted the music to play from. He loaded the CD in, selected ‘all speakers’, and turned the volume way up, before sitting down against the wall to wait.

Pepper was up the stairs within seconds of the first riff, swearing under her breath, and stormed into the office with equal parts confusion and disapproval on her face. “What in the--” she muttered, stopping the player and popping the CD out. “I could have sworn....” 

Tony took in every familiar expression on her face from his place on the floor, watching her eyebrows knit together and her nose scrunch up. CD in hand, she walked slowly back out of the office, and Tony stayed put as he heard Morgan ask, “What was that?” and Pepper’s reply of “You know, sweetheart, I’m not sure.” 

He closed his eyes for a minute, letting the quiet of the upstairs and the faint sounds from downstairs wash over him. 

Within five minutes he was down in the basement, rummaging through boxes. His worktables were mostly still out, which was good. He’d tried calling for Friday in nearly every room of the house, but it seemed that robots doubly couldn’t hear him. Robots made up ninety percent of his friends. Sure, losing contact with everyone he’d ever known in love while still having to watch them live their lives without him and being able to do nothing about it was bad, but losing his robots? That doubly sucked. 

_Here._ It was an electronic reader that he’d made several years ago to scan alien energy emissions that couldn’t be detected by routine S.H.I.E.L.D. scanners. Easy enough to use, no voice activation required, and it was likely to tell him what exactly he was made of. With a little bit of twisting, he was able to point it at himself and press the button. The beep indicated it was scanning successfully. 

With a gleeful smile, Tony set the scanner on the table as it worked and reached back into the box. His hand closed around a small piece of metal that he couldn’t recognize by touch, so he pulled it out and held it up to his face. “Huh,” he muttered. “I--” 

He was interrupted by a sudden and violent jerk, which came from the object in his hand, and which was over in a split second. When he looked up, he realized he was no longer in the cabin’s basement. Light which had not been there a second before blazed at him through a giant window ...with a _very familiar symbol_ on it. 

“My apologies sir, I only meant to retrieve that piece. I’ll send you back immediately to wherever you came from.” 

Tony spun around incredulously to face the voice. He was right. He was in the New York Sanctum, and standing in front of him was Dr. Stephen Strange, who promptly turned white and dropped the file folder he was holding. 

“What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Tony snapped. “Don’t interrupt me while I’m working,” he added out of instinct. 

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Stephen said calmly, but Tony could hear the faintest shake in his voice. 

“No _shit_, Sherlock, I am! I didn’t decide to come back, and be all transparent, and-- wait, you can see me?” He supposed he could just snap his fingers a couple times and get back to the cabin, but every neuron in his head (if ghosts even had neurons) was screaming at him to get to the bottom of this. 

Stephen nodded slowly. “Come on… we should talk.”


	4. In Which Tony Gets One or Two Answers

“Tea?” Stephen asked, leading them through the Sanctum to a few large armchairs.

“Do I look like I can drink tea?” Tony asked. Stephen shrugged. “You seem kind of surprised; did your mystical powers not tell you that I...came back?” he added as he sat down. 

“I did know that ghosts exist,” Stephen said, staring into his own cup of tea. “However, there have only been forty-one recorded files of ghosts, ever, in the entire Sanctum library. And we know a whole damn lot. So I did not expect --” he waved his hand in Tony’s direction “--you to show up. It almost makes me regret going to the funeral.” 

“Big funeral?” Tony asked. “Never mind. So, _Einstein_, what can you tell me about myself?” 

“Where to start? We haven’t had a lot of ghost visitors, as you might expect. What we have figured out is this: Certain people, and so far we believe it is completely random, have a certain genetic mutation that causes a small section of their brain to continue producing currents for a short time after death. Again, we don’t exactly know all the details, but essentially it leads to a ‘projection’ of that person with the same electric brain functions. Your mind is what’s powering you. If I had an all-powerful knife that could cut your head off, it would still be living because everything below that is mostly just an illusion.” 

“I can still touch things, though.” 

“Not living things. Well, not animals.” 

“I figured that one out already, thanks. And I’ll figure out the other stuff, too. I’ve got enough time to do all your research a thousand times over, because what you have is nothing.” 

“Tony, we have forty-one case files of ghosts simply _existing_. We’ve had maybe three talk to us over the centuries.” 

Tony rolled his eyes. “I’ll still do it. Don’t test me. Why can you see and hear me when the rest of the world can’t?” 

Stephen shrugged. “Attunement with the Mystic Arts, I suppose. Any real sorcerer could do the same thing.” 

“Ok,” Tony said, unimpressed. “So. The only way anyone else is going to see -- or hear -- me is if they too have gone through years of magic sorcerer training.”

“Probably.”

“Shit.” Tony sat back. “Do you have anything else to tell me? ‘Cause if you’re going to be my only companion for however many years, I might as well set up shop here. And we’ll be pals.”

Stephen mock shuddered. “It could be worse, Tony. I’m glad you’re not dead -- or not _completely_ dead, I should say.”

“Thanks.”

“If you did stay here, I might be able to study you, _you_ might be able to study you, and we could figure out a lot more. Granted, the last ghost we saw was before I was around, and _he_ was a farmer from Ireland who only spoke Gaelic and didn’t know what a typewriter was.” 

“It’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to go, so fine. But -- Stephen --” Tony sighed and closed his eyes. “I want to talk to them. All of them. I’d like them to know I’m back.”

Stephen gave him a look. “Or I could just tell people.”

“Cheap way to get out of it.”

“Fine, but I don’t know how long it’ll take,” Stephen groaned. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, actually. How long have I been dead?”

“How long have you been a ghost?”

“Maybe a day? Probably less.” 

Stephen scoffed. “Okay then. You died on Tuesday, October 17th. Today is Friday, November 24th. Thirty-seven days. Thanksgiving was yesterday.”

“Okay.” Tony pressed his hands to his lips and knit his eyebrows. “Wait. What about Nat?”

“It’s astronomically unlikely.”

“Well, add that to my list of things to do.”

“Tony!” Stephen snapped. “You can’t _revive_ people.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll figure it out!” Tony rose out of his seat and bent forward to look at Stephen straight in the eye. “At the moment I’m stuck here, for God knows how long, with nothing to do but what I do best: tinker and invent and figure things out. I could work for years.” He turned away. “Look. It's not fair that I'm back and she isn't. Forget the whole ghost-or-not thing. I can be here, talking to you, and she _can't_. Stephen, can ghosts sleep?”

“You don’t need to, but you can.” Stephen was still in the same calm position. 

“Can ghosts eat?”

“I'm not sure. Very small amounts.”

“Okay, then. Here’s what I’ll need.”

\------------------

Stephen begrudgingly cleared out a large portion of the basement for Tony, muttering that he _could_ just go back to the cabin and have a ready-made workspace without any hassle to either of them, but _no_, he had spend his time moving priceless artifacts from one room to another. Tony, on the other hand, spent his time moving the things he needed most from the cabin to the Sanctum, which as an added bonus let him practice touching solid things at the same time. 

After a day and a half, Tony and Stephen stood at the edge of the basement, surveying their makeshift work. 

“It’ll do,” Tony said with a smile. He turned and gave an approving look to Stephen, and then turned on his heel and walked back up the stairs. 

“Where are you going?” Stephen asked incredulously. “You can start on your research now.” 

“I have more people to check in on first,” Tony said, his voice growing fainter as he went up the stairs. “I’d like to say hi.” 

“They’ll be very one-sided conversations!” Stephen called after him, but Tony was already gone.


	5. In Which Tony Takes a Trip Down Memory Lane

The ability to haunt Stephen Strange had improved Tony’s mood greatly. Instead of brainstorming ideas for something that would allow someone to see him, he focused all his brainpower on his traveling, snapping several times before he finally landed outside the apartment building in Queens. 

His conscience grappled with the question of whether it was okay to simply walk *through* the door or to wait for someone to unlock it, but eventually his impatience got the better of him and he strode through the glass and into the hallway. 

The dingy clock on the wall said 2:15. So Peter was probably still at school. Fine. He could wait. Not _here_, obviously, not in the lobby. It took him a good ten minutes of wandering around the building until he found the right door, since he’s been there maybe twice and definitely didn’t have his email on hand to check the number. This time, he ignored the question of privacy and slipped straight through the door. 

Wrong apartment. Unless Peter lived with five goth teenagers who liked to smoke weed. 

The second apartment, thankfully, was the right one. See, there was May, sitting at the counter, scrolling through her phone. It felt like she was going to see him, so much so that he actually tiptoed by her. Nothing. She didn’t even look up.

Peter’s door was open, which he took as an invitation. Tony’s eye was immediately caught by a large box on the floor labeled TONY in thick black marker. He pried the flaps up and inspected the contents. On top were several of his favorite shirts and one blazer. He pulled out one with a Duran Duran album cover on the front. 

_Tony _was wearing a suit. Like he ever wore suits. Experimentally, he pulled the shirt over his head, and even though it bulged awkwardly in some parts over the rest of his clothing, it seemed to blend into him. He went back out to the kitchen and stood in front of May. She paid no attention. Petulantly, he reached out and knocked a salt shaker off the counter. It made a loud clatter, and May sighed and got up to retrieve it. When she stood up, she looked right at him, and Tony froze. Could she see him too? Could she see the shirt? 

_No._ Her gaze passed over him and she returned to her seat at the counter. _Great! Invisi-shirt. _He grinned and returned to Peter’s room. There, he shrugged off the blazer, shirt, and tie, which stayed ghostly invisible even after he was no longer touching them, and pulled the Duran Duran shirt on. Pulling the blazer back on, he threw the other things into a corner of a closet, where hopefully they would never have to be dealt with again. 

He felt better. Forget the physics behind it. It was just nice to be in control of something again. The past few days he had felt so _helpless._ First he had been thrown into what was basically a new body and left to figure it out alone, and even though he’d found some semblance of purpose in the research, and even though he had Strange on his side, he was still somewhat dazed, which no amount of cocky facade would get rid of. All he had now was Strange, and himself, and his research. And yet -- even though he knew it was what he wanted and had to do -- the research felt like less of a choice and more of an instinct, like he had been yanked in that direction by his mind. 

The situation into which he had been thrown had its own rules. Physics _(damn it there I go again)_ didn’t _apply_ to him, which was infuriating. He liked a good challenge as much as the next man, but it was such a daunting thing. He’d saved the fucking world, goddammit, and he’d _died_ doing it, and here he was, back in this plane, with yet another challenge thrown at him not by some evil alien or robot army but by _his own fucking mind._ Would it have been less exhausting to just stay dead? Was it ... _god._ Was it worth it? 

_Yes,_ he chastised himself. _Fucking yes. Look around you. It’s enough to just be here, and to see. Better to start with something than go forever with nothing at all. _

Tony grimaced and bent down to examine the box again. Below the shirts and the blazer was… oh, FUCK. Was that what he thought it was? Holy _shit. _

He pulled from the box a stack of newspapers and magazines, all from the early nineties, all articles or covers about him. How on Earth had these gotten in here? 

Happy. That son of a _bitch._

Tony knew each of them by heart -- had spent ENOUGH time gleefully pulling them all together to be hit with the full gut punch of So Your Past Self Was An Idiot. See, here was the issue of Time in 1991 when he had risen to CEO; and there was the article from spring ‘93 about his plan for ‘A New Stage in Missile Tech’. And _oh my god._ There were the tabloids. Those rags that he had been so _proud to be included on, ‘cause he was famous enough, holy SHIT you were such an idiot._ The issue of LA Today with a big picture of himself and his first boyfriend (well, the first one who had been noticed by anyone even remotely close to the press). Tony himself, at the tender age of 22, was center frame. He remembered trying valiantly to strike a pose that was equal parts mysterious and indifferent. It had not worked, he could see it now. 

Peter was going to SEE these (if he hadn’t already!). Tony groaned at the thought. He groped through the rest of the box, upturning a few technological knickknacks and flash drives, but there wasn’t much else in the box. 

_Slam._ “Hi, May!” called a familiar voice. Tony froze. There was absolutely no time to hide these monstrosities. He haphazardly shoved everything back in the box and stepped back to boil in furious embarrassment. 

Peter came in through the bedroom door within seconds, flung his backpack_ through _Tony against the wall, and flopped down in the desk chair. He looked happy. Tony smiled just looking at him. Two out of the last times he’d interacted with Peter, one of them had DIED. 

It took all of ten seconds for Peter to notice the opened box on the floor. He stared at it for a few seconds. “...May?” he asked himself under his breath. Dropping down to the floor, he hesitated before opening it. It took a good few seconds, but then he swallowed and opened the flaps. 

The shirts made Peter smile. Tony sighed in relief as Peter carefully stacked them up on his bed. _Do NOT donate those, kid. _The blazer Peter also put on the bed. Then he got to the papers. 

Tony wasn’t sure what he was expecting. In response to the newspapers and serious magazines, Peter either looked curious, or his eyebrows furrowed in contemplation. Tony had to give it to the kid -- Peter actually took the time to read each one. Each tabloid, on the other hand, had Peter laughing to himself and muttering “What…?” under his breath. The LA Today, in particular, and another photo of Tony with a particularly attractive girlfriend in 1994, Peter studied the most, with a mix of curiosity, fascination, and incredulity. Tony’s embarrassment was almost forgotten, what with the rollercoaster of emotions Peter’s face went through as he looked through the box. 

Peter had just pulled out another magazine from the box when his phone rang from the desk. Before Tony could see who it was, Peter had jumped up and eagerly grabbed the phone. Whoever it was, he answered it with a huge, almost goofy smile on his face. 

“Hi,” he breathed. “What’s up?” 

There was a pause as he listened. 

“Yeah, I was just looking at some..like, really weird stuff. Good weird. Do you want-- do you want to see it? ‘cause I think you should. It’s really funny. You should.” 

_Betrayed thus far by TWO of my kids,_ Tony thought begrudgingly. 

Peter was listening very intently to the person on the other side of the phone. _Must be important for a teenager to actually pick up a call. _“Yeah,” he said. “No, sounds good. What’s happening with you?” He shot a furtive glance towards the door. 

Tony listened to the conversation for another minute, but there was no way to tell who the kid was talking to. _Probably a cute girl. Or boy. I don’t judge. _He felt like now was a good time to let himself out. He strode out of the bedroom, walked through the kitchen, and waited until he was outside the apartment door to snap his fingers. 

Here was another motivation for his work.


	6. Breakthrough, Part 1

Before Tony went back to the Sanctum, he stopped at the cabin one more time. (He’d gotten used to the faultiness of the teleportation snapping, or as used as he could get.) He wasted almost no time in heading to the basement, but not before he stood and gazed atPepper in the kitchen, sitting with a cup of coffee and talking to Rhodey over video chat. _Time for pitying yourself is over,_ he chastised himself._ I’ve got to get to work. _

The basement wasn’t empty of tools, not by a long shot; he’d only taken what he knew he needed. The AIs, though, he hadn’t taken. They were useless to him unless they could respond to him. That was the first order of business. Maybe if he could figure that out, he could figure out how to get _people_ to see him. People were kind of like impulsive, reckless, irrational robots. Once you got it down to the neurons, it was a simple transfer. 

He picked up the scanner (still left on the counter from two days prior) and pointed it at himself. The first time it read nothing, but the second time it picked up a faint energy source, and the third time it had narrowed down his general mass. When he spoke out loud, it registered sound waves after another few attempts. _Thank you, past me. _Next step: to get the damn robots to read this as a person. 

The computer was still where he knew it would be; it couldn’t be packed up, as it was the key to all the machinery built into the basement. He booted it up, and silently thanked the universe that he’d switched the security from a fingerprint lock to a three-password system before he’d bit the dust. No need to get into the nanotech itself -- another _thank god_ moment -- all he needed was some heavy coding in the right spots. Hopefully. 

The basement was dim and more than a little cold. Tony couldn’t shiver, but he felt the chill settle around him as he worked. It was as if the lab and all his tech had died with him. See, there was DUM-E, fully upgraded but stagnant in the corner, useless without a master. Sure, Stark Industries was still running, and sure, there were over five hundred genius scientists on the payroll, but this was _his_ stuff. _His._ Without him, it was useless. 

Time passed him by slowly. He was well aware of how _quiet_ it was, and he could see from the clock on the wall that more than four hours had passed. Stephen Strange could wait as long as Tony damn well pleased. 

A rustling broke the silence. He turned around, but saw nothing at first. He left the computer to run his latest attempt at a program and walked slowly to the rear of the basement to where the boxes were. 

There was a small figure digging through one of the open ones. Her face was obscured by the contents of the box, but Tony could tell immediately that it was Morgan. _Shit. I left the boxes open._

“Morgo-o-oona, you can’t be down here,” he said to her, and stopped himself from attempting to pick her up. She continued digging. Well, even if he had been alive and visible, she still wouldn’t have listened to him. There was that.

She was going to start a fucking fire, he knew that. He wasn’t sure how, but she would. The garage was bad enough, but there was a reason! The basement! Was locked! Who had unlocked it? 

(He had. He’d found it too weird to walk through things, especially since there was an irrational fear that he’d just fall off the stairs once he walked through the door.) 

Tony had to get Morgan out of the basement. He mustered his confidence and kicked a box off a worktable. It made a very loud crash, and he was sure it had cost several thousand dollars at LEAST, but it had the intended effect of getting Pepper to stick her head through the basement door and peer down. 

“Morgan?” she asked. “Morgan, honey, you can’t be down here. There’s a lot of very dangerous equipment down here.” She stepped down the stairs and surveyed the damaged box. Morgan made a face as she scooped her up, but accepted being held anyway. 

Pepper had just turned around and begun walking towards the stairs when Tony’s computer program finished running, all the lights in the basement turned on, and Friday’s voice blared, “WELCOME, MISTER STARK.”

Pepper and Tony both froze. _Shit. Shit. Oh God. Fuck. I knew I had to check the volume._

Pepper turned curiously, still holding Morgan, towards the computer. “Morgan, are you some kinda tech wizard?” she mumbled into her daughter’s hair. 

“Yeah,” Morgan giggled. In that moment, Tony could have sworn she looked right. At. Him.

Pepper gave the computer a final look before resuming her walk up the stairs and disappearing into the house. 

Tony let his shoulders relax. Pepper would probably be back once she’d -- once she’d put Morgan to bed. Crap, was it that late already? He spun around to face the computer head-on. “Friday.”

“Yes, Mr. Stark.”

Tony grinned and fist-pumped to himself. “Friday, what am I? Not in an existential way. What do you read me as?

She repeated to him the exact energy equation that he’d read on the sensor. 

“I need you to take that and code it into a device that can trick human neurons into recognizing it.”

“They would need to be in contact with such a device at all times to continue reading it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I can figure that out. Let’s do it.”

It took several more hours to carefully solder a circuit board and transmitters together, including the forty-five minutes it took for Friday’s system to code the thing. At the end, though, he was left with a triangular metal pendant, hanging on a chain he’d dug out of a box. The clock read 1:23 a.m. Somehow, he wasn’t tired. “Maybe there’s one upside to being a ghost,” he mused out loud. 

...

The house was quiet, the forest outside. Tony took the pendant with him, and waited until he was in the midst of the trees to snap his fingers. He closed his eyes, and snapped several times, letting the snap take him to random locations until he finally opened his eyes. 

He was on a dirt road in the middle of a field. The sky above him was full to bursting with stars. Okay. This was fine. 

He began to walk, letting his thoughts wander as he listened to the crickets and the rustle of the wind in the grass. It had been a while since he’d had time to do nothing. The thing about the five years after the Snap was that it had been too quiet outside, and too loud in his brain. After he’d gotten back to Earth, and after they’d killed Thanos and went home dejected, there had been nothing for him but Pepper. And he loved Pepper. He didn’t know what he’d do without her. He’d thought he might lose her several times, on every occasion he had almost died. She’d been there for him when he did. 

She’d been there for him those five years, too, one of the few who hadn’t truly turned their backs on him. He’d left the Avengers, turned to a quiet life, been met with silence from those who had once been his friends, and it had still been _too loud_ in his brain. Old nightmares came back, intermixed with new ones. He’d tried to live life slow, and although he’d never regretted Morgan, he was always fighting himself to keep sane, to keep calm, to attempt happiness, and just when he thought he’d gotten it, he was yanked abruptly back into the fray. 

And now his inner monologue finally shut up. Here he was, back from the dead, in the middle of nowhere, with what might be the key to all of this tucked in his pocket, and he felt strangely at peace. It was almost funny. 

It was a while before he got anywhere. He lost track of time and just kept walking. Either he’d switched time zones or he’d been walking a lot longer than he thought he had because by the time he saw the first house, the sky was beginning to lighten. 

Tony estimated it was about six in the morning, and even so, he could see a young man sitting on the porch of the house with a cup of coffee wrapped in his fingers. He kept walking, towards the porch. 

Until he reached the porch, he barely registered the fact that he recognized him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hear that? This is PART 1 of 2 chapters. Part 2 will be posted soon! Not a lingering cliffhanger, thank you.


	7. Breakthrough, Part 2

Tony had called Harley once a week, whether he needed to or not, every week for almost five years. And then, five years ago, after the Snap, he was met with silence. There was no room left in his system to grieve. He only added Harley to the list and moved on. 

Now, here he was, on the steps of this house, looking exactly the same as Tony remembered. So Tony was in Tennessee. He found it a little insulting that his magical ghost teleportation power was better than him at geography. 

He kept walking, and when he reached the steps he sat down awkwardly. Obviously, Harley paid no attention to him. Tony watched him contemplating the sunrise. The kid was what, seventeen? Eighteen? He’d been snapped too -- just like Peter, Tony supposed, although he’d only really heard about Harley’s death through a quick, heart-sinking scan through the list, while Peter had disintegrated in his arms. Tony felt a sudden guilt in his heart. There was no doubt in his mind that Harley was his kid too, and yet he had the urge to compare him. 

He took the pendant out of his pocket and turned it over in his fingers. He half-expected Harley to look over in surprise at a floating necklace, but no dice. _Goddamn ghost physics._ “Might as well,” he said to himself. 

Creeping over to Harley, Tony felt exceptionally weird as he slowly maneuvered the chain around Harley’s head, turning the pendant so that it fell down his back instead of resting on his chest. He quickly scrambled back to watch his theory in action. 

There was a solid few seconds as Harley registered that there was something different around his neck, put a hand up to feel the chain, turned around to stare into Tony’s face, and let out a yell loud enough to send a few crows up into the air. 

“Jesus Christ, kid, it’s just me!” 

Harley’s eyes were wide. “Tony?” 

“Yeah. Uh. Hi.” Tony gave Harley a halfhearted smile. 

“Aren’t you...well...?” 

“Dead? Oh, yeah, as a doornail. Those stones clocked me pretty good. I’m not, like, an apparition sent by some god to give you a prophecy or something, no way. Don’t know how to explain it, but I’m definitely a ghost.” 

Harley was grinning now, not even attempting to put his hand up to hide it. “A ghost, huh? Holy shit, Tony, that is _awesome_.” 

Tony blinked. “You seem really unsurprised.” 

“Look, I got four hours of sleep last night, which is longer than usual, but also why this--” Harley pointed to the coffee “-- has not one or two but _three_ sugars in it, and it’s possible that you’re just a consequence of my brain desperately crying out for help, but if anyone I knew were to come back as a ghost, you would probably be it. You are real, right?” 

“Yeah. Uh, you normally wouldn’t see me, but I made that.” He gestured to the pendant, which Harley pulled around to his chest and studied. “It emits a little electric pulse that tricks your brain into detecting me. And hearing me.” 

Harley reached up as if to slap Tony, but instead waved his hand through Tony’s face. “Huh. I mean, I _definitely_ didn’t have this on three minutes ago, so I guess I have to take your word for it.” He looked at Tony, really looked at him, and his grin settled into a soft smile. 

“How are you doing?” Tony asked gently. “I haven’t seen you in five years.” 

“I know,” Harley said, wiping awkwardly at his left eye. “That’s the weird part. One moment I’m making dinner with my little sister Daisy, then the next I’m watching myself turn into fucking _dust_, and then the _next_ I’m back in the kitchen and Daisy is _older_ than me. And then I turn on the news and you’re _dead,_ and I have to figure out my life as normal. I had to catch up on all the semester homework ‘cause I missed _five fucking years_, Tony, and I went to your funeral, and it was just...so...surreal…” He turned his face back out to the pasture. “And I’m just trying to figure some stuff out.” 

They sat in silence for a moment. “Was the funeral nice?” Tony asked. 

Harley laughed. “Dude, like I said. It was weird, and really sad, but on the upside I met a lot of Avengers. That was cool. I met Morgan. She’s cool too. Little crazy that for me she just popped into existence, but you know. Pepper used your old arc reactor, by the way. That was what stood in place for your body ‘cause S.H.I.E.L.D. had to confiscate it.” He let out a breath and shrugged. “Or at least that’s what I heard.” 

“Huh.”

“Oh, yeah, and Captain America retired, only he didn’t tell people he was retiring, he just hired a body double to pretend to be him and say that he time traveled to 1950 or some shit and just lived out the rest of his life like that, but I know that’s all bullshit. He just wanted a way out that was totally extra and where he didn’t have to die.” 

“I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if Steve did pull that bullshit,” Tony mused. “Also, could use a little more commitment there. Like, come on, I died. Way less effort, way more glory.” 

“Ha,” Harley said. He paused. “Wait, so what are you going to do now?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You’re a ghost, right? Are you ever gonna...you know…pass on? Are you just gonna hang out forever? And like...what are you going to do with your time?” 

Tony frowned. “My plan was to do research.” 

“_What?_ If you died ten years ago and I asked you the same thing, you’d probably say ‘I’m going to ride a shark in Bermuda!’ or some shit!” 

“You're saying I’ve gotten _boring_? I resent that.” 

Harley rolled his eyes. “I am serious, though. You’ve got a lot of time. Maybe forever.” 

“Well, I’m going to research the _hell_ out of...this,” Tony said, gesturing to himself. “And...I don’t know. If I’ve got forever, I can probably figure out a way to ‘pass on’.” 

“Is that what you want?” 

“As much as I’d like to see my kids grow up, I can honestly say I’m not interested in being here that far past that.” 

Harley nodded. “So...what are you going to do _now_? Like, why are you on my porch at six a.m.?” 

“That,” said Tony, pointing to the pendant, and Harley looked down again. “I made that, like, five hours ago. And as of right now, the only people who can see or hear me? Doctor Strange, and you.” 

“You should make more,” Harley said resolutely. “Give them to everyone.” 

“Wow, really? My plan was to just go through existence being invisible to everybody except the wizard and a kid in Tennessee,” Tony said. 

Harley ignored him. “Do you need help? I can help you. I’m technically on break right now.” 

Tony studied him. “Actually? Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. Can you come to New York?” 

“Fuck yeah,” Harley grinned. “Tomorrow, probably.” 

“Ok,” Tony said. He stood up, unconsciously brushing nonexistent dirt off his coat. “Just come to the Sanctum and ask for Sparklefingers.” He turned away as if to walk away, and then spun back. “Oh, and Harley? I need that back.” He pointed to the pendant.

Harley’s smile faltered. “Oh. Ok.” He raised his hands to the chain. “I’m not going to be able to see you when I take this off.” 

“Or hear me.” 

“Or hear you.” He paused. “You have to promise to make me another one.” 

“I promise. Cross my heart.” 

“Ok.” Harley took off the necklace, and blinked. “Tony?” 

He held out the necklace to empty air, and Tony took it from him, knowing that to Harley, it just looked like the necklace had floated and disappeared. “Bye,” Harley whispered to nothing. 

“Bye,” Tony said back, and snapped his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaah!! Sorry this chapter took so long to put up, especially since I promised y'all it wouldn't! Hope y'all enjoyed it + stay tuned :)


	8. In Which Tony Gets His Groove Back

The best thing about being a ghost, Tony decided, was the lack of tiredness. He returned to the cabin basement (no one was awake yet), rebooted the system, and spent a solid eight hours making pendant after pendant. By the time three o’clock rolled around, he had laid out nine perfectly identical pendants on a piece of cloth. He was surprised Pepper hadn’t come down to the basement all day. 

He’d mastered picking things up now. He tucked the bundle of pendants into his jacket before shutting down the computer, carefully reorganizing all his tools into the boxes they’d been in before, and flicking off the lights. 

He shut the basement door behind him gently and went to go find Pepper. 

She was pacing by the lake and talking on the phone. It was hazy outside, and cold. Her outfit was muddled, as if she’d gotten dressed in the dark -- an old T-shirt paired with dress slacks. She’d pulled back her hair in a neat ponytail, but her bangs still waved in the breeze, smacking against her forehead. As Tony got closer, he heard snippets of her conversation. 

“Excuse me, please don’t… I just need you to look at it… I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her tone was clipped, her brow furrowed. 

Tony stood a few feet away, silently watching. (He wished he were affected by normal physics; his blazer wasn’t blowing in the wind dramatically like it ought to.) She was just as pretty as she had been two months ago, before everything went to shit, but now she looked like she had a hundred pounds of weight on her shoulders. 

Pepper ended the call abruptly and stared out at the lake. It didn’t take a genius to figure out how tense she was. 

Tony waited a few seconds for her to do something. When she didn’t, he said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t figure out a way to kill him for a second time and crept up to stand immediately behind her. He slowly, slowly lowered the chain over her head and jumped back. 

He watched her blink a few times. Instead of turning around to face him, though, she immediately moved to take the necklace off. “No -- don’t take it off!” Tony snapped frantically. And instead of greeting him like a soldier home from the war, Pepper turned and screamed in his face. “It’s just me! I’m a ghost!” he screamed back. 

“Tony?! What the _fuck_? No, it can’t be you, because you-- you’re _dead_.” She halfheartedly reached out a hand towards him. 

“No, I swear! I’m a ghost,” Tony said. “See?” He waved his hand through hers. It felt stupid, saying that in front of her. It was different saying the words _I’m a ghost_ in front of a wizard and a kid. This was Pepper. She was logical, scientific. Aliens and gods and wizards had been proven; but a few months ago they’d felt like they’d seen it all -- that if this world hadn’t thrown everything at them, they were content to ignore what they’d missed. Neither he nor Pepper had believed in ghosts. He’d always had that sinking feeling that if they existed, some terrible spectre from his past would have come to haunt him by now. And that didn’t change the fact that he was here, now, having obviously died and been buried yet still standing here with Pepper by the lake. 

“I swear,” he said weakly. She was still frozen, looking at him. “See? The pendant. I made it. That’s why you can see me.” 

“I don’t understand,” Pepper said. 

“Me neither,” Toy replied, truthfully. She moved to take the pendant off again. “Please, Pep.” 

“How do I know it’s really you?” She was still holding onto the chain accusingly. 

“I -- remember, a little bit after the Snap, we took Morgan -- and she was only a year or too old -- we took her to see your mother, in Seattle.” Her hand on the chain had gone slack. He kept talking. “And to cheer everyone up, I tried to make enchiladas, and I burned them and the stove caught on fire and you almost killed me. And in return I took care of Morgan for the rest of the trip. And when we got back I accidentally let her into my lab and she got ahold of a few wires and her hair was on end for a week, and you almost killed me_ again_, but at least I made you smile when I called her Doc Brown until her hair went back down.” 

“After everyone came back, my dad called and asked me why there was a new stove,” Pepper said.

Tony grinned. “You’ve got to admit, this is like the fifth time you thought I was dead forever.” 

“God, if I could punch you now, I would,” Pepper said. “Don’t fucking _scare me_ like that.” 

“Look, I only woke up, what, a week ago? I don’t know. And it was just as jarring to me, too.” 

“So you did die,” she said. 

There was a moment of stillness. 

“Yes,” Tony said, his voice cracking a little. The memory washed over him yet again. God, was he ever going to get over this? He’d died, and now he was back. Dying was a thing of the past. 

“Why don’t you come inside?” she asked, and there was that familiar smile on her face. 

\------------------

They sat on the couch, sitting as close to shoulder-to-shoulder as they could, just like old times. It didn’t feel awkward. This was what Tony had been dreading. Heartfelt reunions had never been his thing. He’d been torn away from enough people that separation felt more like second nature than anything. 

And oh, he wanted to hug her. To wrap her up in his arms and bury his face in her hair and tell himself that everything was going to be all right. And maybe it was going to be all right. 

“What did it feel like?” Pepper asked him gently. 

“Oh, you know, a walk in the park,” Tony joked. He didn’t look at her as he went on. “Pretty fucking terrible, actually.” He buried his face in his hand. “I always knew it would happen eventually, but...I wouldn’t recommend it.” 

“Tony…” 

“But I saved the world, right? So it was worth it. And now I’m back like nothing ever happened.” 

“Except you’re a ghost, and I can’t see you unless I have this around my neck.” She fingered the pendant absentmindedly. “What’s it like being a ghost?” 

“Oh, man. Like...normal, except I can’t touch people. And I don’t have to sleep or eat. And I can teleport, but apparently I can’t control _where_ I teleport, which has caused some problems. And I can avoid whoever the fuck I want, which is very nice, except I can’t avoid the wizard -- Strange -- because he’s got magic vision or whatever. And do you know how long it took to get those robots to see me? God, if I thought dying was a hassle!”

One corner of her mouth twitched. “So that wasn’t Morgan.”

“Nope, definitely me. I know you had high hopes about our daughter being a supergenius at age four.”

Pepper chuckled. “I’m glad you’re back, Tony. These last few weeks have been… honestly, the worst weeks of my life.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“What the fuck do you have to be sorry for? You saved the goddamn _world_. If you hadn’t sacrificed yourself we all would have died anyway. Goddamnit, Tony, any one of us would have taken your place in a heartbeat._ I_ would have. I _love_ you.”

“I love you, too, Pep.” He paused. “And come on. I’m the only one who could have gone down that epically. I mean, I even slipped a one-liner in there. Captain America wishes he could die as epically as me.” 

Pepper rolled her eyes. “I’m going to get Morgan.” She pushed herself up, and Tony watched as she walked to the base of the stairs and called: “Morgan? Sweetheart, could you come down here?”

Morgan bounced down the stairs almost immediately, still holding an action figure in her hand, and sat at the bottom grinning up at her mother. Pepper took her by the hand and guided her to the living room. She took one of the pendants and held it out to Morgan. 

“Morgan, I need you to put this on _very_ carefully.”

“Oh, I trust her not to break it,” Tony muttered in Pepper’s ear.

“She’s _already _accidentally broken my mother’s best vase.” Pepper muttered back.

“Was it a loss, really?” Tony asked as Morgan slipped the necklace over her head. He watched as her eyes refocused. 

“Daddy!” She grinned and bounced over to him. “I knew you w-- oh.” She’d tried to hug him and frowned when her hands only touched thin air. She wrinkled her nose and looked up at him. “That’s weird. It’s like before, when you went poof.” 

“Morgan,” he said. He tried to put his hands on her shoulders, but ended up awkwardly waving them through her and eventually put them back by his sides. “That was a bit different. That was a hologram.” 

“Hollowgram. Like a video.”

“Yep, like a video. But I’m not a video. I’m really here, except now I’m a ghost.” 

“Like Casper!” 

“Goddamn...sorry, _yes_, just like Casper.” 

She narrowed her eyes. “That’s _so cool_. I just wish I could hug you.” 

“I wish I could hug you too, Morgoona. But here.” Tony took the action figure from her hand -- Iron Man, obviously -- and kissed its plastic head.“Now you can hug this when you want to hug me, because now I’ve filled it with my ghost magic.” 

Morgan took the toy back and hugged it to her chest. “Really?”

“Dead serious.” 

“Okay.” She grinned at him. Tony’s heart had never felt so full. 

“Morgan, why don’t you go back upstairs and play?” Pepper asked. “Dad and I have some things to talk about.” 

“Okay.” Morgan turned back to Tony one more time. “Are you going to leave again?” 

Tony hesitated. “It’s going to be like it used to be. I will never, ever leave you permanently.” 

Morgan nodded, turned on her heel, and headed back upstairs. 

Tony turned back to Pepper. “God, I missed you guys. I know I’ve only been back for like a week, but it was so awful being invisible.” He frowned. “What did you mean by ‘things to talk about’?” 

“I just...I have some questions. You know how I am; I like to know things.” 

“Fire them at me.” 

She looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath. “Well...isn’t being a ghost pretty...permanent? Like are you going to live forever? Do you even want that? And what are you going to do with your time? Are you going to become Iron Man again? Can you even use the suit? Are you going to let everybody know you’re back?” 

“First of all -- no offense to you -- I feel like I’m on a quiz show. Second of all, Pep, I don’t know. But we can figure this out together. And Strange knows and I talked to him about it and I’m going to go work in the New York Sanctum so we can research together. I think at this moment in time I just want to figure myself out. Literally. I don’t know how I work.” 

Pepper nodded. “I’ll be here for you. Where are you going to go now?” 

“I’m calling the _squad_ together to New York. Wanna come?” 

“Ha! Let me get a babysitter first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovelies! Had some writers block, but I'm so glad to get this chapter out to you before finals hit! I was able to get some outlining done over the past month and I think it's safe to say we're between a third and a half of the way through the story. PLENTY of material to work with!


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